Euro-nonsense

This is a standard ‘in it to win it’ europhile piece of a sort you could have read at any time since about 1965.  It’s argument is simply that if Britain left the European Union it would still have to comply with all European regulations or have its products banned from sale. 

One only has to look at the financial services industry to see the risks. If British-based providers of financial services wanted to do business in the single market, they would have to abide by whatever regulations the rest of the EU dreamed up. These would certainly be more restrictive in the absence of British involvement. At a time when other EU governments see an opportunity to cut London down to size, would it really make sense to be a bystander?

But this is nonsense.  In fact, it’s an inversion of the truth.  Britain exports financial services to the world, not merely to the EU.  Do we have to abide by global regulations?  Do we hell.  If the EU wants to impose highly restrictive regulation on financial services that’s not bad news for the City – it’s the best news imaginable.  Look at what happened in the aftermath of Sarbanes-Oxley.  Public listings in the US fell, while those on the LSE soared.  The extremely restrictive US laws on securities (ERISA and the SEA) have meant that the world capital for bond issues is London (or was until recently).  The last thing that we need to do is engage in trans-national regulation if our aim is to maintain our competitive advantage.

Mandy for PM?

The problem with this, rather entertaining, piece by Julian Glover imagining Prime Minister Mandelson is not the scenario it charts leading to Brown’s downfall – that’s perfectly foreseeable.

In the last week of August, news hit the City that Standard & Poor's had downgraded Britain's credit rating. Hours later the Treasury announced an auction of £4bn worth of 25-year bonds at 4.5% had failed – dealers dismissed them as a risky punt compared with the security of German or US loans. The chancellor was forced by Downing Street to make a live broadcast dismissing the story as "incomplete and misleading". But when the governor of the Bank of England confirmed his deep alarm about Britain's inability to pay its way, Darling's resignation became inevitable…

He made one last effort to stay on, announcing from Scotland that Balls was to become chancellor and Woodward chief secretary, in charge of spending. The appointments simply added insult to injury. In London, the cabinet gathered to issue a private ultimatum: Brown must go or they would quit – and to everyone's surprise, he folded. He gave a dignified final statement to Sky News, before flying to Harvard with his family. He has not spoken in public since.

I can envisage that, or something like it, happening quite easily.  I can even imagine the circumstances whereby Lord Mandelson became Prime Minister after a show of hands in cabinet, although it’s a bigger stretch.  What I really can’t imagine is this.

Within days Mandelson had introduced a bill for rapid democratic reform of the Lords. He won support when he persuaded Vince Cable to become his independent chancellor. John Cruddas and James Purnell joined the cabinet; soon after, Mandelson – released from the Lords – fought and narrowly won a byelection to get him back into the Commons.

The general election date was confirmed well in advance: 6 May 2010.

With just months to go, an emergency programme of cuts has given the government an austere sense of purpose – the halving of the Olympic budget, the scrapping of Trident, and withdrawal from Afghanistan are said to be just the start. The Tories have been outflanked. At 34%, their poll rating is now just 1% ahead of Labour.

Vince Cable won’t join the Labour Party.  It is not possible to resign a life peerage – and legislative attempts to allow this would take a very long time, as they would have very wide-ranging constitutional moment and be resisted tooth and nail by the opposition, and in the Lords itself.  The Labour Party are already riven with enough splits without having Peter Mandelson  - who 70% of them loathe - as leader.  Not going to happen.  Brown will stagger on until next year and then go down to the humiliation he so richly deserves…

Turning in the wind

As I may have mentioned once or twice, I bowl off-spin (though my actual cricket appearances this season have been strictly curtailed both by the arrival of my beautiful daughter and by the fact that, in my only appearance so far, I dived in the outfield and broke a rib).  I love spin bowling.  It turns what can be a purely physical contest between bat and ball into a series of psychological challenges.  Anyone who saw Shane Warne bowling to Kevin Pieterson in the 2005 Ashes would recognise that quality spin bowling adds a whole other dimension to cricket.  No team should ever play a match without a front line spinner in the side.

That Australia look poised to do so would have seemed impossible even a couple of years ago.  But in the aftermath of the Warne era, Aussie spinners have been either too old (McGill and Hogg), not good enough (Kreyza, Casson, White) or too old and not good enough (poor old Bryce McGain).  The sole specialist in the Ashes squad, Nathan Hauritz, looks about as threatening as a damp flannel.  His first class average, which is as good a way of measuring quality as any other, is a distinctly underwhelming 47.  Just by way of comparison, Richard Illingworth (not Ray, Richard) managed 31; Ashley Giles got it below 30.  Graeme Swann, England’s leading spinner, laughably rated by Warne as equivalent to Hauritz, has a first class average of 32, and, as importantly, has taken five wickets in an innings 17 times, twice at Test level.  Hauritz has never taken five wickets in an innings.

Australia are clearly suffering a spin drought.  Worryingly, for them, this drought is far more of a natural state than the embarrassment of riches when Warne was understudied by McGill.  Spin bowlers take longer to develop than quicks, require far more careful handling, and more intelligent captaincy.  Put a pace bowler on in the early stages of a game and the field sets itself.  Slips and a gully, point, cover and mid off, mid on, mid wicket, square leg and deep fine leg.  If the ball’s swinging take out midwicket and put him in the slips.  If it’s bouncing take out mid on and put him there too.  Easy.

Spinners, however, are generally put onto to bowl once it becomes clear that the quicks aren’t going to get the breakthrough.  The batsmen are well set, and the fielders’ heads are starting to drop.  Short boundaries, chunky bats and rippling muscles mean that good balls can get deposited for boundaries.  For too many captains, two or three boundaries mean that the spinner is quietly sent into the outfield and replaced by an economical medium pacer (not that I’m bitter or anything).

Attacking spinners find it very difficult to keep a place in the side – skippers preferring figures of 10-3-23-1 to 10-1-55-4.  Accordingly defensive spinners predominate – bowling darts at leg stump with a packed legside field.  Flight, bounce and turn are discarded in favour of accuracy and economy.  Spinners end up bowling to give the quicks a break, and to keep one end tied down.  That in a nutshell is how we move from Shane Warne to Nathan Hauritz.  From attack to defence.  And it’s a problem at every level of cricket, from village all the way to Test level.  But tight lines and defensive fields don’t win Test matches – what you need is aggression, skill and the courage to toss the next ball up after being hit for six.  As Ian Chappell said, if you want containers go to a shipping yard.

By any other name...

There have been cricketers in the past with great initials.  My favourite used to be JWHT (“Johnny won’t hit today”) Douglas, captain of England and Olympic boxing champion, though WPUJC Vaas was pretty good too.  In fact, I’d thought that Chaminda, with an epic five initials, was sure to be the all-time champion for sheer length of name.

No longer.  My attention has been drawn to the delightful Ebony-Jewel Rainsford-Brent (and there’s a name in itself), who delights in the initials EJCLCR Rainsford-Brent.  Just how long must her cheque-book be?

Ed Balls's incendiary underwear

Interesting.  I thought this post from Fraser Nelson was bang on the money.  I was woken up this morning by the less than dulcet tones of Ed Balls refusing to answer the questions and my first thought was “I bet the Coffee House won’t be impressed by this.”  It was all there, the elisions of different figures, the blatant misrepresentations of Tory policies, the talking over the question, but this time there was a new element.  The lie direct.

“We have acted in the downturn, that will mean that the economy is stronger, we’ll have less unemployment, less debt. Therefore we will be able to spend more on schools and hospitals. The Conservatives have opposed these plans, the national debt will be higher with the Conservatives.”

As we know, from the Government’s own most recent figures, national debt is set to rise in real terms for as long as forecasts run.  So the first sentence is not true.  As we also know, again from the Government’s own figures, departmental spending on health and education is set to fall.  So the second sentence is not true.  The third sentence, being a projection, is less obviously a lie, until you realise that Balls is eliding a hypothetical – what would have happened had the Tories been in power last year – with a prediction – what will happen if they win power next year.  It is, at the very best, highly misleading.  Three out of three sentences, therefore, are untrue.  Balls is a liar.

Well, colour me unsurprised.  This Government have routinely told lies, from little fibs about the Tories planning to abolish the State Pension in 1997, to bigger lies about Bernie Ecclestone, to creative statistics about Iraq ad infinitum.  What’s the difference here?  Well, as Fraser says:

Five years ago, you could lie like this on the radio and get away with it. Space is tight in newspapers, no one would devote hundreds of words and graphs - as we did - to expose a lie for what is. But the world has changed now. Blogging has brought new, hyper scrutiny. Blogs have infinite space, and people with endless energy, to expose political lying - no matter how small. Your claims can be instantly counter-checked, by anyone. If you stretch the truth, you can be exposed - by anyone. And if you plan to base a whole election campaign on a lie, as you apparently intend to do, then you're in for a rude awakening.

And it’s fair to say that Balls doesn’t like having this pointed out to him.

Ed Balls has just called me up about my post from this morning , hopping mad. He instructed me to "take that post down now". I thought he was joking: has there been some change to the constitution where ministers now have power over the media? But he was deadly serious. "You should not call me a liar," said Balls. I told him that if he doesn't want to be called a liar, “he shouldn't tell lies”.

I think that sounds like excellent advice.

Incidentally, and on the same point, Danny Finkelstein comments on the real significance of Brown’s failure to remove Darling and impose Balls on the Treasury:

As Chancellor Balls would have acted entirely politically. He would have done anything to provide the figures that could sustain the campaign. His only financial objective would have been to put pressure on the Tories. He would have used his authority and Treasury support to make cuts v investment seem real.

Danny, incidentally, is far more charitable than Fraser.  He merely describes Balls’s interview as shameless a piece of political nonsense as I have ever sat through.  That’s practically a rave review for Labour these days.

Happy Birthday Reptile

Big year for the Reptile - first the little Reptilette, now a milestone birthday!

Looking forward to celebrating with you tonight old boy - and lots of love from all your avid readers (both of 'em)

More on Iran

If you knew that you were likely to be framed by the police, would you go ahead and commit the crime anyway, reasoning that you had nothing to lose? Would that be the sensible thing to do? Then, at trial, suppose you decided that, even though you were innocent of the charges brought against you, it would be sensible to behave in a manner that gave the jury reason to suppose that you might in fact be guilty after all. Would that be a sensible policy?

Alex Massie stands firmly by his argument that Western politicians’ vocal support for the Iranian protestors is counter-productive.  I argued yesterday that David Cameron’s support for the protestors was, at the very least, not harmful to the interests of those protestors, and also that the opposite policy, of refusing to give verbal ammunition to the Iranian regime, was not working.  With some trepidation, since I usually agree with Alex about most things (except Graham Gooch), I maintain my position.

I think that Alex is in slight danger of engaging with the Ayatollah purely on his terms.  Voicing support for democracy and opposition to a military dictatorship shooting its own citizens is not a crime.  Stating clearly that the will of the people should prevail, and that attempts to rig elections or suppress demonstrations with violence are abhorrent are not, on any meaningful level, attempts to interfere in the internal politics of Iran – the overthrow of Mossadeq this ain’t.

Secondly, I think that Alex might be putting too much faith in the announcements of the Iranian press and regime.  Christopher Hitchens has a piece more or less on this theme in Slate.  The spirit of Uncle Napoleon is alive and well in the Iranian Government – but he is a figure of ridicule for the Iranian people.  The idea that because David Cameron voices his support for the protestors, the Iranian public will believe that the whole protest has been orchestrated by MI6 seems a little far-fetched.  As Hitchens says:

There is nothing at all that any Western country can do to avoid the charge of intervening in Iran's internal affairs. The deep belief that everything—especially anything in English—is already and by definition an intervention is part of the very identity and ideology of the theocracy.

So I don’t think that the ‘Marg bar Ingilis’ point really stands – for evidence of this, as I noted yesterday, the British Government is already being described as evil, and our diplomats are already being expelled.  What higher diplomatic stakes are there?  When state prayer meetings end with a rousing chorus calling for the death of your country, how much further have you to fall?

…there's the thought experiment Daniel Luban conducts: suppose Khrushchev had come out and endorsed Martin Luther King and called for the international community to do more to support the civil rights movement. Do you think this would have increased support and sympathy for MLK inside the United States? Or would it have been, from the perspective of the civil rights movement, an unwelcome and counter-productive intervention?

As comparisons go this doesn’t seem terribly helpful.  It is certainly hardly more apposite than the attitude of Thatcher and Reagan to the Solidarity movement in Poland, that Alex was so quick to dismiss on Monday.  Neither example is a parallel to modern Iran.

So what are we left with?

…if rhetoric were likely to change the Iranian regime's behaviour then it might have done so by now. And of course it hasn't. So one is left with the suspicion, alas, that all the fine words uttered by western politicians are really designed for domestic consumption, not in any expectation that they'll bring the mullahs to their senses.

There is of course one consideration that Alex hasn’t factored in.  Voicing opposition to the stifling of democracy in Iran might be the right thing to do because it is the right thing to do.  As Peggy Noonan says, you shouldn’t need to ask whose side we’re on in a battle between freedom and autocracy.

I would tend to agree with Alex: there is nothing that the Western Governments can do that will be of much help to the protestors in Iran.  However, our conclusions are different.  His is that we should therefore do nothing, for fear of playing into the Iranian regime’s hands.  Mine is that giving support to this cause is “due to our own character and called for by our own duty.”

Which is a suitably melodramatic and self-aggrandizing way of saying that in a conflict between a regime that does not scruple at shooting teenagers dead and those teenagers themselves, it should not be considered unacceptable to voice a preference.

Has Cameron failed his Persian exams?

David Cameron’s comments to the Conservative Friends of Israel dinner that the Iranian regime should be threatened with sanctions, and that the protestors should know that the British are on their side have received something of a mixed reception.  While Iain Dale is impressed, and invokes the spirit of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, Alex Massie is decidedly less so.

Alex, for whom I have a great deal of time, bases his argument – that Cameron has “failed his Persian exam” – on the following point:

In as much as they are concerned with the opinion of foreign politicians, the protestors almost certainly do know that "we are on their side". The point, as any cursory acquaintance with Iranian history should remind any commentator, is that the two countries on earth that should say the least right now are the United Kingdom and the United States of America. This is, as I've written before, a battle for, forgive the cliché, the hearts and minds of the Iranian people. If the authorities can, however implausibly, tar the opposition by associating them with the two countries that orchestrated the 1953 coup in Iran then that benefits the regime, not the protestors.

Fair point.  Except that the authorities are going to be making that case anyway.  Witness Khamenei’s description of Britain as “the most evil of foreign powers”.  Obama has, Massie says, been making “delicately crafted statements” to avoid giving the Iranian regime the chance of tarring the protests as American inspired.  And yet the regime’s response has still been to say:

What happened in this case was that the U.S. and the West were expecting the presidency to be transferred to an element with whom they perhaps felt more at ease. They viewed this as an opportunity to exert pressure on the Islamic Republic. Therefore, behind the scenes of everything that is going on, one sees the same people who have been lying in wait for the Islamic Republic.

So the downside of publicly supporting democratic protests against a military dictatorship (as Iran has revealed itself to be) is that the Ayatollah’s regime will make speeches denouncing the West as a pernicious influence behind those protests.  Which they will do anyway, with the same credibility, whether that public support is forthcoming or not.  So why not follow the example of Daniel Webster?

In 1823, first-term congressman Daniel Webster spoke up in support of the Greek revolution. Responding to critics who said that mere rhetorical support would do the revolutionaries no good, Webster said: "I hope it may. It may give them courage and spirit. It may assure them of public regard, teach them that they are not wholly forgotten by the civilized world, and inspire them with constancy in the pursuit of their great end."

And in any case, Webster continued, support for those fighting for freedom abroad was "due to our own character, and called for by our own duty."

As a final point, I think it is overly harsh of Alex to criticise David Cameron for voicing his support for the protestors, and to draw from it the conclusion that he is unready for office.  After all, other voices echoing this include Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and (no! But yes!)  Barack Obama.

What you're seeing in Iran are hundreds of thousands of people who believe their voices were not heard and who are peacefully protesting and - and seeking justice. And the world is watching. And we stand behind those who are seeking justice in a peaceful way. And, you know, already we've seen violence out there. I think I've said this throughout the week. I want to repeat it that we stand with those who would look to peaceful resolution of conflict, and we believe that the voices of people have to be heard, that that's a universal value that the American people stand for and this administration stands for.

Oh, and what has been the reward for Miliband and Brown’s heroic restraint?

Gordon Brown has just told the Commons that two Iranian diplomats have been expelled from Britain - after the Iranians expelled two British diplomats.

This comes just hours after the Iranian administration accused the UK of stirring up dissent among protesters in Tehran and elsewhere - a claim denied by London.

I simply don’t see that the softly-softly approach is achieving any benefits (for Britain or for Iran) whatsoever.  Nor why the fact that David Cameron voiced his support for the protestors in virtually identical terms to Obama should him (or either of them) unsuitable for high office.  Perhaps Alex Massie can explain?

Speaker Bercow

Well, he wasn’t the Speaker I’d have chosen.  He’s bumptious, pompous, arrogant and obnoxious – and those are his good points.  Choosing a Speaker in order to annoy the opposition doesn’t have a fantastic pedigree either.  But there we are.  A couple of points do occur to me, however, which people who are greeting Bercow’s victory with elation ought to consider.

The first is that the Labour party have less than a year left in power.  Not long before a grinning front bencher can sneer “we are the masters now”.  Taking important political decisions for petty political reasons is funny now.  Less funny next year when the subject of party funding, or postal ballots, or voter registration, or union affiliation, or House of Lords reform come up.  As examples of bi-partisan co-operation go, this one was not up there with the best.

The second is that Labour have bought a bit of a pig in a poke.  John Bercow’s overwhelming characteristic has been neither loyalty nor consistency.  He was Torier than the Tories before he got Buckingham, one of the safest Tory seats in the country.  Under 12 years of Labour rule, he tracked ever closer to the Blairite big tent, teetering on the very edge of defecting last year.  But now he’s Speaker, he needs nothing from Labour.  Indeed, the only threat to his position would be a Tory Government taking steps to dethrone him.  I wouldn’t be too surprised if he starts tracking back.  PMQs should be interesting at any rate.  In a sense, Bercow is on a year’s probation.  Obvious slippage, and the reappointment of the Speaker for the next Parliament, normally a formality, may be a real contest.

Sealing the deal

This article in the New Statesman is about as fine an example of wishful thinking as you could hope to see.  Without going too deeply into it, it displays the traditional tropes of its kind: Tory support is shallow, an economic revival would put Labour back in the box seat for victory, the Tories aren’t achieving the same polling leads as New Labour were – that sort of thing.

Well, good luck to them.  Whistling in the dark has a fine pedigree.  But the problem for Labour is that Tory weaknesses are all but irrelevant.  Macintyre is quite right that the Tory vote share in the European elections was less than that achieved by William Hague.  But it is the Labour vote share that is more interesting.  If Macintyre is after historical comparisons, how about this: in the 1994 European elections, the Conservatives polled 28% - getting on for twice as much as Labour in 2009.

I rather suspect that we will be still be reading articles about how the Tories have yet to ‘seal the deal’ with the British people when Boris Johnson is running for his second term as Prime Minister.

An impressive effort...

Look, I’ve written before about how highly I rate Michael Vaughan.  At his best he is elegant, quick-scoring and can swiftly dismantle an attack.  He is, however, aging, out of form and prone to injury.  His chances of batting at number 3 for England in the Ashes were dealt a pretty hefty blow by Ravi Bopara’s three consecutive hundreds as well.  All that said, if he were to get himself back into form he would be the obvious choice for ‘first reserve’ in case of injury or loss of form.  And it’s hard to deny that a number of writers would like him back…

Michael Vaughan found enough time on a rain-wrecked day to make an impression on England's national selector, Geoff Miller.

I appreciate the sentiment, but how much of an impression can you really make with a quick 21*?